Embodiments herein generally relate to electrophotographic printers and copiers or reproduction machines, and more particularly, concerns an adapter card that can communicate with customer replaceable units.
Many recent advances in printing focus on better integration of control systems with the hardware and materials to improve run cost and other functionally important topics (FITs). Many of the concepts and proposals being developed require some level of software integration to gain the full run cost or other FIT benefits. While there is some input to the control software for a manufacturer's developed products, for outsourced or acquired products, the “hooks” into the software to implement advanced technology concepts are lacking, and getting outsource vendors to provide the appropriate taps into the machine control is sometimes difficult. Some of these concepts could benefit the current machine population in the field greatly, but would require a costly and nearly unfeasible software upgrade to implement. In such instances, a manufacturer would likely have very little control of the system software, but would want to inject value-add technologies to improve the performance and robustness of these base engines.
This disclosure outlines a method of obtaining the required control “hooks” in an outsourced print controller that enables concepts being developed to improve run cost and other FITs in current and future acquired engines. Most print engines support some form of external updates of their non-volatile memory (NVM)—through a front panel user interface, service interface, TCP/IP connection, print job submission interface, etc. By adding a low cost electronic module to the engine that communicates with the customer replaceable unit memory, often through RFID interface, and the machine control unit (MCU), embodiments herein make it possible to affect machine operation solely through adjustment of the machine's non-volatile memory.
Embodiments herein take advantage of the standard interfaces normally provided by the machine control unit to enable implementation of technology concepts without requiring changes to the system software of the engine. In addition, the embodiments herein enable manufacturing to modify machine settings on a cartridge by cartridge basis to enable improvements that are developed during the machine's life cycle, without requiring a service engineer to make any software upgrades or unscheduled maintenance, and without requiring any special “hooks” within the machine's engine control software.
More specifically embodiments herein comprise a printing device that includes at least one printing engine that comprises customer replaceable units. At least one engine controller is operatively connected to the printing engine, and the engine controller uses software to control operations of the printing engine.
At least one non-volatile memory is operatively connected to the engine controller. The non-volatile memory stores values used by the engine controller to control operations of the printing engine. Additionally, at least one adapter card is operatively connected to the non-volatile memory and to the customer replaceable units. The customer replaceable units each comprise a memory unit.
The adapter card reads incoming print jobs before the print jobs are delivered to the controller and the adapter card accumulates and stores statistics relating to print jobs within the memory unit of the customer replaceable units. The statistics can comprise, for example, area coverage on a page-by-page basis, localized pixel counts (in both dimensions), maximum number of layers used per page, area coverage spread (concentrated in one region versus across the entire page) per page, media type, job lengths, machine usage as a function of time of day, etc. The adapter card passes the incoming print jobs to the controller in an unaltered manner.
In another embodiment, the non-volatile memory stores values used by the engine controller to control operations of the printing engine. The adapter card reads these values from the non-volatile memory and the adapter card stores the values within the memory unit of the customer replaceable units.
In a different embodiment, the non-volatile memory stores values used by the engine controller to control operations of the printing engine and the adapter card stores data. The adapter card uses the data to alter the values within the non-volatile memory by bypassing the engine controller when communicating with the non-volatile memory.
The adapter card comprises a physically separate device from the engine controller. More specifically, the adapter card can comprise, for example, a printed circuit board, at least one logic unit mounted on the printed circuit board, wiring within the printed circuit board connected to the logic unit, and connection terminals on the printed circuit board connected to the wiring. The connection terminals can be operatively connected to the non-volatile memory.
The adapter card can be connected to the non-volatile memory through one of the following interfaces: TCP/IP based web server interface; front panel keyboard wedge interface; service interface; direct hardwired connection; etc. Further, the adapter card comprises an item designed to be installed in the printing device after the printing device is in post production, customer service. This also covers the case of sourcing a third party engine, then adding the adapter card to enable delivery of value-add solutions without the update of the existing engine controller or system software.
These and other features are described in, or are apparent from, the following detailed description.